Happy Nation – A Night of Performance, Music, and Transnational Alliance

Imagineered by Hollow, Jelena Visković, and Folyékony Máshol

About the Event
Happy Nation is a one night event involving two multimedia performances, one live act, and two dj sets.
The event will build on the possibilities and challenges of counterculture, disobedience and play in the current political landscape, yearning for the revival of political imaginaries. Happy Nation taps into a transnational connection, inviting artists for an evening of cross-cultural collaboration, underlining the strength of complex identities and queer influences in Budapest’s underground scene, contributing to its cultural undercurrents resisting the state controlled cultural hegemony.

Program Schedule
20:40 – Doors Open
21:00–21:40 | Hollow: Archive MMXXXV
21:40–22:20 | Motonation
22:20-22:50 | Violette Lagouine
22:50–23:30 | dakayu & bobafe420
23:30–01:00 | DJ Entyce
01:00–??:?? | poppyseed b2b The Stanley Maneuver

Suggested entry: 4000 HUF (cash only)
Please message us for a guest spot if you're in a tough spot financially: happynation2035@proton.me

About the Performances
The evening opens with two site-specific performances created by Jelena Visković and the artist collective Hollow (Tamás Páll, Gyula Muskovics, Viktor Szeri), featuring performers Marija Iva Gocić and Chad Spence aka Čedo.
These performances explore themes of participation, speculative fiction, and the power of the body in collective transformation. In dialogue with a curated night of music by Folyékony Máshol, the performances dive into world-building, resistance, and care as forms of political engagement.

Motonation
Premiered at Salon Mladih (Zagreb) and Eugster (Belgrade), the work directed by Jelena Visković investigates movement, body politics, and post-Yugoslav performance cultures. Using a motorbike as both metaphor and mechanism, the piece confronts alienation through humor, queerness, and rebellion – reimagining freedom and identity beyond Western narratives.

Hollow: Archive MMXXXV
A continuation of Hollow’s worldbuilding practice, the performance reflects on the birth of collective identity through the lens of art-making. Drawing from their immersive theater work Aura (2023, Trafó), this piece explores how micro-communities can serve as alternatives to nuclear family structures. Archive MMXXXV presents a living archive – a mirror and a myth – asking what forms of care and kinship can emerge when artists create worlds together.

Music Lineup - Curated by Folyékony Máshol

Violette Lagouine
French native Violette Lagouine is a singer-songwriter based in Budapest. Her songs and covers create an eerie, dreamy atmosphere relying on a minimalistic guitar playing, a moody, sometimes operatic singing voice and her strong stage presence.

dakayu & bobafe420
Emerging from Pécs’s electronic music program, this duo (originally from Ukraine and Kazakhstan) strikes a balance between mood swings and peaceful atmospheres through irregular rhythms and harshness.

DJ Entyce
Blending Afrobeats, Amapiano, and House, DJ Entyce creates sets that move bodies and spirits. He champions Afro-diasporic culture while connecting international and local communities through rhythm.

poppyseed
poppyseed (Csenge Csató) is a Budapest-based visual artist and music selector known for bass-driven, genre-crossing sets. She’s also one half of Lazy Calm Raga (Lahmacun Radio).

The Stanley Maneuver

The Stanley Maneuver (Molnár András) is the mind behind Folyékony Máshol. His main interest in djing is to uncover and present obscured, forgotten and imaginary connections between musical worlds and to erase the hierarchies and stereotypes that often burden these realms.

Meet the Artists
Jelena Visković
Instagram

Born in Zagreb (1989), raised in Belgrade and Budapest, and now based in London, Jelena uses recreation, play, and disobedience to challenge power structures in culture and technoscience.

Chad Spence aka. Čedo

Chad Spence, also known by the artist name Čedo, was born in an African metropolis in the throes of an almost-revolution. Chad is a multidisciplinary artist who explores how narratives shape identity.

Marija Iva Gocić

Belgrade-based artist (b. 1998), working with performance and site-specific interventions. Her work meditates on intimacy, trust, and endurance within social and media landscapes.

Hollow
Instagram

The shapeshifting collective of Viktor Szeri, Tamás Páll, and Gyula Muskovics. Combining dance, augmented reality, and live role-play, Hollow creates speculative worlds where reality is up for renegotiation.

Support
Happy Nation is supported by UNESCO through the “Culture and Creativity for the Western Balkans” (CC4WBs), a project funded by the European Union. CC4WBs fosters dialogue and enhances the socio-economic impact of the cultural and creative sectors in the Western